Objectified Oldsmobile - 1964 Oldsmobile F85 4-4-2 convertible

The 1964 4-4-2...er, we mean B09 Cutlass

Feature Article from Hemmings Muscle Machines

This is not, technically speaking, a 4-4-2.
No, seriously, I'm not kidding.
Yes, I know, there's a badge on the fenders, and that distinctive dual-snorkel air cleaner has the classic red-orange-yellow tiered label. And the advertisements in 1964 all proclaimed "4-4-2." Yet, despite everything you've been told over the years, Oldsmobile didn't really make a 4-4-2 in 1964, they made a B09 Cutlass.
Semantics, maybe. But nowhere on the window stickers or MSRPs for the 2,999 of these cars built that year will you find the numeric moniker that we've come to associate so well with Oldsmobile performance. It was, pure and simple, a sales tactic that became a part of the company's heritage and that stuck with various models for four decades. We'll argue that "four, four, two" rolls off the tongue just as easy as "bee, oh, nine," but perhaps the latter just wasn't as cool as the former.
Either way, 4-4-2 wasn't quickly understood by the general public, and it appears that Oldsmobile-especially after the brief introductory year-did little to educate the masses, letting the car speak for itself and carry Teddy Roosevelt's proverbial big stick. The term was a kind of code, similar to the languages of the Underground Railroad and the speakeasies of the 1920s. The high priests of horsepower at the time knew what it meant and knew how to transform a run-of-the-mill F-85 Cutlass into a true muscle car, but it took much longer for Joe and Jane Six-Pack to figure it out.
In 1961, the honchos at Buick, Olds and Pontiac bought into Chevrolet General Manager Ed Cole's insistence that all four divisions could share development costs on a much-needed compact car similar to the Corvair, but each imparted its own variations on the theme-Pontiac brought the engine up front and left the transmission bound to the rear axle in its Tempest; Buick and Oldsmobile engineered an aluminum front-mounted V-8 engine bolted straight to the transmission and a live rear axle for the Special and F-85, respectively. All three of the B-O-P siblings also added 4 inches to the Corvair's 108-inch wheelbase to become "senior compacts."
The F-85 didn't sell well at all. The Cutlass coupe and convertible, which came along in 1962, boosted sales slightly, but Cole insisted that Oldsmobile had no business in the compact market. Meanwhile, Ford essentially created the intermediate market of the 1960s with its 1962 Fairlane, measuring 115.5 inches. Bunkie Knudsen, by this time the head of Chevrolet, ordered a competitor in the form of the Chevelle and, this time, included the corporate siblings in an effort to reduce tooling costs. With the introduction of the 115-inch wheelbase A-bodies in 1964, Oldsmobile's F-85 crossed that line in the sand and entered the mid-size market. It now carried a full perimeter frame and separate Fisher body rather than the previous unit-construction body, and came standard with an iron V-6.
And then, along came a tiger.
The popularity of the youth-oriented GTO, which few at GM seemed to expect before its October 1963 release, sent Oldsmobile's staffers into the studios to come up with an answer. Fifteen years previously, Olds had scored a performance coup with its overhead-valve 303-cu.in. Rocket V-8 engine. But after a decade and a half and several displacement increases, the Rocket was getting long in the tooth by the early Sixties. So for 1964, Olds Engineers Gil Burrell, Frank Ball and Lloyd Gill developed the 330-cu.in. replacement, which Oldsmobile called the Jetfire.
The new engine used similar dimensions-and thus shared some tooling-to the first-generation Rocket, but had completely new heads, blocks and manifolds. A couple of two-barrel versions powered the F-85, the Vista Cruiser station wagon and the new full-size Jetstar 88, making 230hp or 245hp, depending on the compression ratio (9.0:1 and 10.25:1, respectively). Oldsmobile also put a four-barrel carburetor on the latter engine to crank out 290hp, a combination that came standard on the Cutlasses and was an option on the F-85s, Vista Cruisers and Jetstars.
Part of the glamour of the original Rocket engines had come via the contract with the California Highway Patrol to produce Olds Rocket 88-based police cars. Though police departments across the country gradually turned to Fords and Chevrolets throughout the 1950s, several departments continued to use Oldsmobile 88s and a few busted crime in F-85s. For that reason, Oldsmobile had developed two different police packages for its 1964 cars.
The first, the Highway Patrol Apprehender-also known as option B07-included a 345hp version of the 394-cu.in. Rocket and heavy-duty suspension. According to sales literature from 1964, Olds intended the B07 package for full-size Dynamic 88 four-door sedans and station wagons destined for situations that demand "maximum maneuverability under high-speed conditions."
The second, the City Cruiser Apprehender-option B01-seemed geared toward everyday city police cruiser duty. Oldsmobile had apparently developed the B01 both for the F-85 sedans and station wagons as well as for the Jetstar 88 and Dynamic 88 full-size cars, using as many as three different versions of some parts for the same package. On the F-85s, the B01 package included the 290hp Jetfire, a 15/16-inch front and 7/8-inch rear anti-roll bar, 410-lb. front springs, 160-lb. rear springs, a performance rear axle and heavy-duty front and rear suspension components.
Olds general manager Harold Metzel, chief engineer John Beltz, engineers Dale Smith and Bob Dorchimer and PR guy Dave Jarrard got together to figure out how to take advantage of the nascent muscle car market. It would have really been a no-brainer to follow exactly in Pontiac's footsteps and just drop the old 394 under the F-85's hood and go fast. The 345hp version of the big-block would easily compete with the Pontiac 389's 348hp Tri-Power engine. But the big-block was near the end of its life, and its incredible weight, due to the then-obsolete thick-wall castings, would have created a handling nightmare and would have quickly overpowered the 9.5-inch brakes.
But the 330-cu.in. Rocket had a thin-wall casting, weighed less than the 394 and already developed 290hp. With a few tweaks to the four-barrel and a hotter camshaft, along with the dual exhaust, a dual-snorkel air cleaner housing and revised rod and main bearings, Smith and Dorchimer wrought 310hp from the new small-block. All the heavy-duty suspension parts from the B01 package slipped right into place, and suddenly, Oldsmobile had a contender.
According to Dennis Urban, the Oldsmobile Club of America's resident expert on 1964 4-4-2s, Oldsmobile's engineers discovered that the new 310hp engine ran at a much higher rpm range than the Jetaway automatic transmission at the time could handle-it kept blowing seals-so the new performance car would have to make do with just the manual transmission.
The combination, then, of the 310hp Rocket, the four-speed transmission and the heavy-duty police suspension, along with 6-inch-wide steel wheels from the station wagon, became its own special package-the B09 Police Apprehender and Pursuit package-at a cost of $285.14, about 9.6 percent of the F-85's base price. The package also included subtle 4-4-2 badging on the front fenders and on the special air cleaner.
Oldsmobile first exhibited the new car in April 1964 at the International Auto Show in New York, well after the October 1963 launch of the 1964 cars and only a few short months before the end of the model year in August. In a press release announcing the car, Oldsmobile called it the "442," without the dashes, and kept referring to it as "experimental" and as one of several "sports models." Nowhere in the press release did Oldsmobile happen to explain what the three digits meant.
The 4-4-2 went on sale shortly afterward, with the stipulation that customers could add the B09 package to any F-85 except for the station wagons. Rumors persist that one 4-4-2 station wagon escaped the factory, but Urban said that, to the best of his knowledge and research, that car is just a tall tale. What perhaps has spurred that myth over the years-other than the B01-equipped F-85 station wagons-was the production of 10 four-door B09s-seven deluxe F-85s and three plain-Jane F-85s. Ironically, Urban said he believes the three non-deluxe F-85 B09s went to the Lansing, Michigan, police department.
The late introduction of the cars certainly accounts for the low production number, though some analysts also blamed a low-key marketing campaign. Urban said he believes Oldsmobile simply determined from the beginning that they would make about 3,000 before retooling for the 1965 models. He cites the fact that all 1964 B09s came with shaft-mounted rocker arms in the heads. However, very late in the 1964 model year-after the introduction of the B09s-Oldsmobile ran out of those heads and switched to the heads with individual stud-mounted rocker arms. That, then, suggests that Oldsmobile had produced the entire run of B09 engines ahead of time, with a limited production run in mind, Urban said.
Either way, the B09 earned a reputation as a better handler than the GTO and as the most balanced muscle car on the market. It also became known by the youth-oriented moniker, leading Oldsmobile, in 1965, to drop B09 as the package name on the option sheets in deference to 4-4-2. Olds made several other changes to the 4-4-2 in 1965, not the least of which was replacing the 330-cu.in. Rocket with the 400-cu.in. V-8, introducing a newly beefed Jetaway automatic transmission and appropriately changing the interpretation of 4-4-2 from "four-barrel, four-on-the-floor, dual exhaust" to "400-cu.in. engine, four-barrel, dual exhaust." The interpretation got a little murkier in 1966 when, for one year only, Oldsmobile offered a triple two-barrel carburetor option, but still called the car a 4-4-2. Didn't matter at that point, Urban said; everybody knew 4-4-2 meant Olds performance.
But in 1964, Rollo and Ruth Alderfer knew only that they wanted a red convertible with a four-speed. Their '55 and '57 Chevys were about due for replacement, so the Alderfers began their hunt for a new GTO, with little success. The lack of availability of the cars sent the couple, seven-year-old Randy in tow, to Dellen Oldsmobile in Indianapolis, where they spied a nice new red 4-4-2 convertible. In June of 1964, without even a test drive, the Alderfers left $50 as a down payment and came back shortly afterward to pick up the car.
The car served the family well for the next four years or so, before it went into storage, where it sat until 1987, when Randy brought the car to Fort Worth, Texas. Over the next couple of years, Randy restored the car and showed it at various Oldsmobile events.
Richard and Debbie Hirsch, of Austin, Texas, saw the car in 1989, shortly after its restoration, and told Randy to call them if he ever thought about selling the car. Eleven years later, with about 38,000 miles on the odometer, Randy made that call, much to the Hirsches' disbelief.
Richard had only to make a few changes to the car to bring it to his standards. Though reviews of the car upon its release lauded it for its excellent handling versus other American five-passenger sedans, the reviewers made sure to include those caveats. In Motor Trend's 1964 road test, Bob McVay noted that the car "just goes to show that, with the proper options, a five-passenger car can have good handling characteristics and still keep its comfortable ride." A few paragraphs later, though, McVay pointed out transmission linkage adjustment problems, the ultra-stiff clutch, the non-power-assist brakes and the slow, albeit smooth, power steering.
Richard seems to have agreed with McVay's ascertainment. He added a Centerforce clutch, which took most of the grunt work out of gear changes, and sent the car's original power steering box to Power Steering Services in Springfield, Missouri, to have the stock 20.7:1 ratio reduced to a quicker 12.0:1 ratio. He raved quite a bit about the new steering box. "It's a big improvement," he said. "It makes parking a lot easier-I don't have to sit and crank for 45 minutes now." Indeed, in our test drive, we found the new ratio a joy to work with, though at times, it seemed that the tires couldn't handle the speed of the box.
A set of radials, which Richard bolts on for normal driving duties (he keeps a set of mounted original-style red-line four-ply tires for shows), combined with the stock front and rear anti-roll bars, let the car "stick like glue" to the road, Richard said. "With the original tires, it felt kind of wishy-washy in the corners, mostly because of the composition of the tires."
A four-core radiator replaced the original three-core unit only because Richard didn't want to chance getting stranded by the side of the road. "I haven't seen a big difference in temperatures with it," Richard said. "It's just my habit of over-maintaining these cars."
However, Richard stopped there with the modifications. Most significantly, he left untouched the 9.5-inch-diameter power drum brakes-which perhaps vexed early reviewers most of all. It's not that he's not familiar with upgrading the brakes on a mid-Sixties Olds-he installed discs from a 1970 Cutlass onto his '65 Vista Cruiser-it's rather that he wanted to keep the car visibly stock. The drums, then, grab and lock often at speed, forcing you to pump the brake sooner and more often than normally expected, but haul the car down well enough.
Visibility is excellent, even with the top up, though stock placement of the tachometer-near the front of the console, under the dash-proved distracting, forcing you to look through or around the spindly steering wheel rather than up at the dash, where Oldsmobile later moved it.
The engine, though, proves as balanced as Oldsmobile's engineers intended it. A 750-rpm idle greets you at startup. The factory cam sounds slightly rumpity, but enough to complement the dual exhausts and the rush of the wind with the top down. Stab the throttle, and you won't get the tightness in your chest that a big-block V-8 grants, but the acceleration will still push you back into the seats.
The 4-4-2 eventually got that big-block Olds, and after a few years, it sold so well that it became a series of its own among the Oldsmobile lineup. After the muscle car zenith, Oldsmobile folded the model back into the Cutlass line, where it remained, defanged, through several iterations until its ultimate demise in 1991, making it one of the longest-lived muscle nameplates.
But regardless of what nomenclature the car originally came with, the 1964 car's mix of performance, handling and youthful orientation gave it the fortitude to go head-to-head with the emerging muscle cars of the Sixties, and earned it the right to be called 4-4-2.
Owner's View
Richard Hirsch, a member of the Boomer generation that got targeted so heavily by the muscle car manufacturers, said he remembers well the time when these cars came out, and driving his is "like an instant time warp" to 1964.
"The dealers made a big deal about hiding these cars until they made the model change, so we'd go over late at night and try to see the new cars," Richard said. "It was such a thrill to be the first in our small town to say that we'd seen the new models, the new 4-4-2s."
Perhaps for that reason, Richard said he tries to keep the car looking much like it did in 1964. He and his wife Debbie take it out less than half a dozen times every year to various car shows and Oldsmobile Nationals, adding about 1,000 miles every year.
Richard said he plans only to eventually repaint the car, though he would have enjoyed air conditioning for the Texas heat-the original owners apparently felt top-down A/C was good enough for Indiana summers.
Club SceneOldsmobile Club of America
517-663-1811www.oldsclub.org
* Dues: $30/year; Membership: 6,400
Pros
o Handles respectably, even more so with the radials
o Drop-tops always prove popular
o Relative scarcity means you won't see many like it at the cruise-ins.
Cons
o Four-wheel drum brakes require a five-year plan for stopping.
o Be prepared to open the wallet wide when buying one.
o Also be prepared to say time and again, "No, it's not a Chevelle."
4-4-2 Fisticuffs
Over the years, more fistfights and trivia questions have broken out over the meaning of 4-4-2 than perhaps any other automotive fact. But it's a thorny issue both because Oldsmobile changed the meaning over time and because the company was never too clear about it to begin with. So, as far as we can tell, 4-4-2 apparently meant something slightly different nearly each year of the nameplate, diluting as it marched along.